God's Reflection
by Gundam-Issac
Summary: Four years after the end of the sound-leaf war, conflict strikes a small village. But who will save them? OC, no pairing. T for blood. One shot, but could be expanded.


Four years after the end of the sound-leaf war, conflict strikes a small village. But who will save them?

Disclaimer: I don't own anything here, except the wolves. I like the idea of them.

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God's Reflection

_Isshin calmly faced down his opponent, a skilled ninja of the Mist. Twirling his sword around in his fingers, the mist ninja was biding his time, waiting for Isshin to make a mistake. Both knew that to save the princess Isshin would have to make the first move. _

_Realizing he had no choice, Isshin sped into action, and with a jerk of his hand he sent a multitude of shuriken at his opponent, which where quickly blocked in a blur of swordplay. Not relenting, Isshin shot forward like an arrow from a bow, hands blurring through seals. His opponent sped towards him bringing his sword up to get a swipe at his chest. _

_Smirking, Isshin bent down and slammed his hands into the ground, using his arms to flip himself up and above the Mist nin as he slashed at where his chest had been a second before. _

_As Isshin landed, the jutsu took effect, collapsing the ground under the mist nin, causing him to become submerged in chunks of rock. Not giving up on his chance, Isshin threw a kunai right between the nin's eyes, killing him. _

_He sped forward, hoping that he could save her in time…._

"Megumi! Megumi! Where are you!"

Megumi jumped up from her bed, dropping her book to the floor. Cursing as she flipped through it looking for her page, she cried down, "I'm right here mom." Ignoring her lost page, she sped downstairs to where her mom was cooking. "What do you need?"

Her mom looked up from the stove, "Go down to the butchers and see if he has some fresh rabbit. Take the money from my purse." Megumi nodded, and grabbing some money, ran off.

Megumi was a normal girl. She was the normal height of 5-8, a normal weight of 120, had normal brunette hair, normal green eyes, normal body shape, normal clothes, everything was normal about her.

But it wasn't just her that was normal, everyone and everything in the village was normal. This was a very big accomplishment for a place within a day's journey of a major ninja village, but they managed it. She almost wished that the sound-leaf war had kept on longer so that there would be something interesting happening.

Then again, this normalness was what made going to the Butcher's so interesting. The Butcher was a tad anti social and lived a mile away from rest of the village. It didn't really seem that long a journey, however, especially since he was such a good and abnormal person. Why exactly he was weird, well, everyone knew that.

Megumi hummed to herself as she re-found her page and read, going down the path from the village.

She didn't know how long she had been going when she heard the growl, but she knew she was in deep trouble. She looked up from her book to see a large, grey wolf facing her down from ahead. The beast, like most of the wolves in the area, was at least two times the size of a normal wolf, and just about as feral. Its mouth slobbered with drool as it approached, step after step, slowly closing the distance between them.

"_Whaaa…. what? What is a wolf doing hunting at this time of day?" _Megumi's thoughts became less of wonder and more of terror and the wolf continued to advance on her. With each step it took, it felt like an unseen force was suffocating her in bloodlust, the hunger, the fear, the pain…

Had she been thinking more, she would remember her book referring to this as "killing intent."

There was no way she was still close enough to the village for someone to help her, and she had no idea how far away her destination was. She took a step back.

The wolf, as if waiting for this moment, suddenly bolted forward and jumped up. She knew what would now happen, the wolf would hand on her, and it would rib her throat out, and kill her.

At the cusp of his jump, however, it suddenly jerked to the side in mid air. The sudden shift in momentum mid-air caused it to go to the left, making it land just to the side of her. There was a whistling sound and her head whirled to the right.

"Now that was a close one! Another second and you'd be dead." An imposing figure was just coming out of the trees, pushing a branch aside so he could step on the path. He was a large man, well muscled and strong. His head was covered in a mane of hair, from his large scruffy beard to his wild hair. But even though most of his features were hidden, you could always tell that he was smiling, because he usually had some kind of smile on. He wore an ankle length apron over tan pants and a long sleeved brown shirt, which protected him from anything that would splash onto him during his work.

He smirked as he walked over and pulled his knife out of the wolf's neck, examining it closely before drying it on his apron. After pocketing the knife, he turned to Megumi. "So you ok?"

"Ok? OKAY! You ask if I'm ok! I was almost killed by a huge-ass wolf, then am saved by a butcher who came out of the damn forest like some crazy ass ninja!" Huffing, she glared at him, as he stared blankly back at her.

"Sssooooo… I'll take that as a 'no' then." He shrugged, and then examined the dead wolf. "One of those stupid half nin dogs, when will the Inuzuka clan learn to keep their mutts in check?" The Butcher hefted the dead wolf over his shoulders. "Come on, I'm assuming you wanted to get some meat." He started walking, leaving the dumb-struck girl in the middle of the path. After a couple of paces, he looked back. "Ya' coming or not Megumi?"

She rushed up to catch up to him, keeping pace behind him. Glancing at the wolf's carcass she remembered the killing intent and shuddered, but she kept moving.

The town's butcher was a weird one, no doubt about that. She still remembered the day back when she was fourteen that he had come to the village. She had been walking somewhere, probably on some errand or another, and saw him enter the town. He had lacked his beard, but his hair was just as wild. It was one of the few times she had seen him without his apron, but apparently he picked that up in town a few days later. As he walked past her towards the town-leader's house, she glanced into his eyes, and thought, for a second, thought she saw something. When she looked closer, there was nothing, and he moved on.

Some time after that, he had set himself up as a hunter and butcher. He had somehow got his house up in only a week, which surprised all the people who helped him, as every time they would leave for the night they would come the next morning and swear that things were different, changed, worked on.

And the work wasn't the simple work one man could do, oh no. It was serious work. Numerous planks that no one remembered chopping, beams organized and ready, painted objects that had lain bare beforehand…

But his house's mysterious construction wasn't the only thing odd about him. On multiple occasions, two or even three people would say they had spent time with him, all at different places. Once, last year, her father had said hello to him in the town square as he collected some vegetables, a group of three hunters had seen him out in the woods five miles away, and her friend had bought some meat from him at this shop, all within about thirty minutes of each other.

"So you going to keep day dreaming, or you gonna' come in?" Megumi's head jerked upwards as she realized they were at his house. Apparently, he had gone off towards the side to dump the body and she had kept walking. Blushing and muttering apologies, she went up to the door he was holding open and went in, he following close behind.

The interior of the house was, like him, very cheery. The walls were painted a very friendly blue color, the windows and doors green. The only thing in the first room was his butchering counter, which stood facing the door with a small rack of supplies and a door to the cold room on the wall on the other side.

Smiling as always, he walking behind his counter and turned to face her. "So what can I get for you Megumi?"

Her thoughts drifting back to her mother, Megumi answered. "My mom wanted some Fresh Rabbit, got any?" He nodded and went into the back room, going through the days catches. He returned a minute later, his now gloved hands clutching a small bundle of raw meat.

"How much are you planning to get?" Megumi handed him the crumpled Ryou she had gotten from her mom and he examined for a minute, before separating a large chunk from the rest and putting it in a bag. "Here is some extra, for the whole wolf thing." He grabbed another chunk, and put it in before handing it to her. "Have fun with that."

Megumi put down her book on the counter to properly hold the bag. "Thank you!" With that, she walked out the door, and started back to town.

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He milled about for twenty minutes after she left, then blurred his hands through seals. Had anyone with sufficient skill been watching him at that time, they would have seen a huge build up of chakra shoot out of his body in all directions, going through walls and trees and animals. A second later, the chakra rebounded back to him.

_So no one close, good. Don't want anyone seeing anything._ He thought before lazily going through seals. With two puffs of smoke, a pair of bunshins and turned to him, awaiting orders.

"Go skin, gut, and butcher the wolf out there. Meat in the cold room, skin in the tanning room, all that jazz." The bunshins nodded and rushed outside to do the task. Confident in the task soon being done, he went over to wash his hands.

After drying them, he happened to glance over at his counter and see a book that he knew he didn't own. "Huh, I guess Megumi left it here…" Shrugging, he picked it up and flipped through it. "Guess I better go and give it back."

Hands occupied by the open book, he kicked his door open and he started walking down to town. It was really a pleasant day, though you couldn't really call it day for much longer. The sunlight was starting to retreat to the west and be replaced by the darkness of the east. The music of the night was just starting too, the bugs chirping to each other, the leaves rustling in the wind. The wolves would eventually join the symphony, but not for a while yet, and definitely not anywhere near him.

He'd shown them what would happen if they attacked him. The idiot earlier hadn't noticed him. Then again, when he didn't want things to notice him, they didn't. He was just that good.

As he read the book and strolled, the music of the night was joined by something else…

Screams. Fire. Buildings burning.

Stopping in his tracks, the Butcher looked up and concentrated on his ears. Judging from the volume of the sounds he could hear and the direction…

The village.

Cursing the forest that had stopped him from hearing the attack earlier he shot forward at incomparable speeds.

Had anyone seen a car, they might have gotten close.

He slammed on his brakes as he hit the middle of the main village, if it could still be called that. Many of the buildings were on fire, people scrambling to put them out. All around him were people bleeding, injured, screaming, crying…

_For a second he wasn't in the secluded village anymore, but on the battlefield, his friends beside him killing and being killed… _

"NO!" Pushing those thoughts to the back of his mind, he went off towards where the mayor was dealing with a small crowd. Cutting through the group, he stood face to face with the mayor. "What happened here?"

Surprised at his sudden arrival, the mayor stood silent for a second, and then answered. "We were attacked by enemy ninjas. Sound if the headbands are accurate. They came about ten minutes ago, sending fireballs into our buildings, attacking the people randomly. A small group of them went to our winter stores and stole about a month's worth of food." He paused, as if he didn't want to say the next part. "Also, before we could form any kind of counterattack, they stole about ten of our women and ran."

The mayor was shivering with rage, the townspeople with him. One spoke up. "I thought that the sound were defeated years ago!"

The Butcher cut in. "Beaten, yes, Destroyed, no. You can destroy as many armies as you want, as long as some exist, you still have the enemy."

Another villager yelled out. "We have to retrieve our women!" Other yelled in agreement, until a sudden wave of malice energy spread throughout the crowd, choking off any attempt at violence.

"First," the Butcher spoke in a cold voice, colder then any had heard in their lives. "Any attack by mere villagers on ninjas of any rank would be suicidal. Second," He gestured towards the east with his thumb. "They went that way, right?"

"What are you planning on doing?" A man said.

"Just tell me, that way, right?" The man nodded, and the Butcher turned and started to run. "WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?"

Even though he yelled at the top of his lungs, they could barely hear him due to the distance he had covered. "I'm going to play the hero!"

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Megumi was crying. She really couldn't do much else.

Almost the second she had entered the village, a group of men with ninja headbands and covered faces stormed through, attacking and destroying anything in their way. Before she knew it, one had shoved a rag in her mouth and threw her over his back, before taking off into the forest.

She tried to tell herself that it was just like in her book, where the damsels in distress would be saved by the gallant warrior who defeated enemies in the blink of an eye.

But no, that was a fantasy. Even if her village could somehow get ninjas to save them, Konohagakure was a whole day's journey away, and by then…

She shuddered; best not think about that…

After another few minutes, the ninjas came to a stop in a small clearing, where Megumi and the others was dropped unceremoniously to the ground. Their leader turned to face the rest.

Their leader, or at least she assumed he was their leader, was a tall man, not very broad, just tall. He wore no mask about his face, revealing what in another circumstance would be considered a handsome face. He wore both shirts and pants with over sized sleeves, which he somehow never slipped on. On his head, gleaming in the last light of day was a metal headband with a single musical note on it.

"Ok you maggots! I don't particularly care what you do with your 'new friends' just as long as it is in tents and I don't hear too much of anything. We are moving out at O' 750 tomorrow morning, so finish your crap up fast and sleep."

The troops let out a cry of anguish almost in unison. "Come on sir, it has been ages since we've got new blood!" He grabbed the girl he had kidnapped by her hair and forced her up, which resulted in a squeal of pain. "Give us more time, man!"

The leader shook his heads. "No. With the fall of the Sound army, we are possibly the largest group of Sound nins still together. I am not going to jeopardize us just because you want more time with a girl you plan to kill in the next couple hours. You're lucky I even let you kidnap these people! If Konohagakure were to find us…"

"Trust me mate, you aren't that lucky." The group, ninjas and kidnapped women alike, all whirled around (in the women's case, it was more like twisting, since they were still on the ground) towards the voice. Standing not one hundred feet away was the Butcher, he hand resting against a tree.

"Who the hell are you!?!" the leader growled.

The man replied, in a coy manner "Why me? I'm just a butcher." The leader looked at him confusedly for a moment, but only a single moment. _Apparently, this one is good…Jonin probably. _ The Butcher thought.

His thoughts were interrupted by the Leader's voice, "Kenshin, kill him."

There the stood, hand against the tree…

Then, a ninja stood behind him, kunai in hand and coming down on his head.

Then, there stood the ninja, hand towards the ground looking very dumb.

"My my, what a badly treated knife." The ninja looked upwards to see the Butcher standing on a branch examining the knife he had taken. "This thing looks like it hasn't been cleaned or sharpened or treated in ages." After rubbing some blood from it, he took a dry stone from his apron, he started sharpening the kunai. "If you treat your weapons better, they will help you more."

Growling, the Sound ninja jumped upwards, both hands grasping numerous senbon as he prepared to hurl them all. The last thing he saw was a blur and a glint of metal as the Butcher jumped down and landed on him, jamming the knife into his throat.

Suddenly, it was there. The feeling of killing intent, but the bloodlust produced by the Butcher made the wolf look like a baby in comparison. Megumi choked for a second, and then the intent vanished. "I'd suggest surrendering." The Butcher whispered and looked up, his eyes blood red. "I'm sure you all felt that, and trust me; I live up to all expectations."

Immediately, another ninja jumped up, drawing a nodachi from his back and swinging it down. There was a clank as sword met knife in a rapid exchange of attacks before the ninja fell. His head landed a second later. Just as two more ninja started to move, a cry of "HALT!" resounded throughout the field. The ninja and the Butcher all looked to the leader, who had his own kunai to Megumi's throat. "Now put your kunai down, now, or else the lady gets hurt." To emphasize his point, he pressed the blade down a bit, causing Megumi's whimpering to suddenly stop in fear of accidentally killing herself.

A deep scowl crawled across the Butcher's face as he stopped. Slowly, he crouched down and put the kunai and a wide variety of meat cleavers on the ground, then straightening back up and raising his hands. "Let her go. She is an innocent"

The leader stood still, knife still to her throat. "How about, no. Shinji, kill him." One of the other random ninjas nodded and sped forward, two wakizashi blurring towards the Butcher's head. There was a collective gasp as the head was cleaved from the body…

Then went poof into a column of smoke and disappeared into nothingness.

"Wha…" The leader couldn't even finish his words before the ground opened and a hand shot out, ripping the knife away from the Megumi's throat and implanting an elbow into his face, sending him flying back and breaking his nose. Megumi gasped for air as her gag was suddenly removed. Shocked, she looked around. The leader wasn't the only one who had been hit; all of the other ninjas standing around the women were attacked from underground by clones of some sort, _Kage Bunshin, _she thought, and were forced away.

Gathering into a group a little way away from the women, the ninja drew weapons. "You can take us one at a time, maybe even two at a time, but can you take all of us while protecting them?"

The man rose his hand behind him, palm curled as if holding a small ball. Quickly, chakra spun around in his hand, forming an orb of pure destruction the size of a soft ball. But it didn't stop there. Three huge blade-like protrusions extended from the ball, forming a sort of shuriken. "You know what? Yes. Yes, I think I can kill you all."

Immediately, one of his clones spat out fire from his mouth, his seals too fast to see. The stream of fire soon got a wind infused Rasengan slammed into it. The result was chaos. A miniature tornado only in size, gale force winds spread towards the ninjas. But the wind wasn't the only threat, as the fires were amplified and carried by the wind until it looked more like a firestorm of destruction. The inferno raged for a thirty seconds, and then stopped.

"Uzimaki-sama…" Megumi whispered as she watched the fire lit trees.

The Butcher cracked his neck loudly. "Been ages since I've done that, glad to see it still works."

A scream ripped through the night, and the villagers all looked over to the leader, who was still on the ground a ways off. "You," He was trying to crawl away on his elbows without getting up."You, You are supposed to be dead!"

The Butcher approached him, cracking his knuckles. "Why do you say that? Did I get hurt?" The leader was now frantically going backwards. "You, you're the Demonic Butcher of Kohona, Naruto Uzumaki!" He hit a tree, and started trying to climb it. His fear was so intense that he couldn't even use chakra to help him. "You died in the final battle of the Sound-Leaf war!"

The Butcher, Naruto, frowned as he reached forward and grabbed the man by his shirt, whipping him to the ground with his wrist. "You are right; I did die then, but hey," He smiled, but this time it wasn't genuine. "it takes a dead man to finish off a dead army." His hand blurred to the back of the ninjas neck, and he stopped moving.

For good.

Turning to face the villagers, he smirked. "So who wants to go back to the village?"

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Naruto looked up at the house where he had lived for the past 4 years and sighed. It really was a nice place to live, he was sad he had to go. After a quick sweep of the house for any belonging he had forgotten to seal up, he sighed and placed the keys on the counter. "Goodbye house."

Closing the door, Naruto started for the woods, only to be stopped by a cry of 'Stop!' Looking behind him, he saw an out of breadth Megumi standing only forty feet from him. Advancing on him, she started talking. "Why are you going? The mayor said you could stay here!"

Putting on a sad smile, Naruto replied, "It is time to move on. I just need to go." He turned, and started for the woods again.

"But why, we don't care if you were some big time ninja in the past!" She pleaded at him, but he just kept walking. She slumped downwards, "Why do you have to live in the past like this?"

It was barely a whisper, but he apparently heard it, stopping and turning around to face her. His normally cherry and haughty face was colder then she had ever seen it. "Catch." He tossed her something from him bag, which she fumbled for in the air and managed to catch.

Looking at it, she said, "My book? But why…"

"That book is good for its purpose, it entertains the reader, but it doesn't tell real stories of ninjas." He took a step forward. "It doesn't tell you about your friends dying, killed by one who you could have called a brother." He took another step. "It doesn't tell you about people who don't kill for a reason, just for fun." He took another step. "It doesn't tell you about the rush you get from killed, or the horror you feel when you notice it." He took a step forward. "It doesn't tell you that when you deal the finishing blow to someone, and looking into their eyes, that just for a second, merely a second, you see _God_ reflected back at you." He now stood directly in front of her, his voice merely a whisper. "Back in the war, I was credited with killing about half of the enemy army. I've seen god way to many times, and unless if I can't help it, I'd rather never see him again."

Megumi looked up into his eyes, and saw the flicker of a reflection in his eye, the same that she had seen those four years ago. Only now she knew what it was, and really wished she didn't.

"I'm sorry." With that, Uzumaki Naruto, the Demonic Butcher of Konoha, the Butcher of a small village, enigma to many, living dead man; left into the woods. No one from the village ever saw him again.

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End Notes

This is the result of me reading some of the Eragon series and getting the image of a killer butcher in my head.

Yah, you will need to wait more for any work on the new series, sorry.


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